If things had gone as planned with my pregnancy sixteen years ago, I would have one ticked off teenager right now.

For one thing, this would be just about the worst sixteenth birthday in the history of sixteenth birthdays. It’s supposed to be Independence Day #1, because in Texas, this is when he could have tested to receive his driver’s license.

But it’s a Saturday. The DMV isn’t even open.

To add to the insult, it’s raining nonstop.

I imagine a cranky boy joking and getting shoved by his friends as they shovel in cake. Looking out the window at the rain, wishing it weren’t a Saturday. The ONE TIME he finally gets a weekend birthday, and it’s the one he doesn’t want to be a weekend!

But these scenes are only in my mind. They aren’t happening. They will never happen.

He won’t drive a car. He didn’t even live to know cars existed. The only way he probably even knew his mother existed was a steady beat of sound that mirrored his own, a slow heavy thud that underscored the warbling muted voices through the walls that held him suspended in the only world he would ever know.